Short and Spiffy
by Twinings
Summary: Desperate times call for desperate measures...[CAT]


_Disclaimer: Don't own._

_Techie just told me to write something short and spiffy. Here it is. CAT fic._

_Don't know when this takes place. Doesn't matter. But the CAT site is still www. freewebs. com/ catverse if you care to look around._

* * *

Gotham in the middle of summer was naturally hot. The city trapped heat and held it like a kindergartener with a lollypop.

(Who said it was easy taking candy from babies?)

The entire city was hot, but any place without an air conditioner was unbearable. So when, due to circumstances outside their control, the Captain, Al, and Techie lost their air conditioner (along with every other electrical appliance in the lair, darn that greedy power company) they decided to spend a cool afternoon at the movies.

When they returned home, there was no sign of the boss...but they _did_ find none other than Edward Nygma burrowed under their couch cushions, making small, frightened sounds and covering his eyes.

They couldn't help but realize that whatever had happened while they were out, the Scarecrow must have had something to do with it.

Techie and the Captain stayed to tend to their friend while Al went to knock on the lab door. She was polite about it, all too aware that if Jonathan was in a mood to gas, he wouldn't hesitate to loose his wrath on her. But when he didn't respond to her summons, and a test of the knob showed it to be locked, she shrugged and knocked harder.

"Are you in there?"

"Where else would I be?" came his irritable reply.

"What did you do to Eddie?"

He responded promptly, "If you can't tell by now, then I'm wasting my time keeping you around."

She pounded on the door.

"Jonathan Crane, if you don't answer my question right now, I'm going to march right down there and drag you up by your ear! Why did you gas him?"

There was a moment of silence, during which Al had time to realize just how much like a scolding mother she really sounded. She would have even called him by his middle name if she had known what it was.

"He wanted to see if you three would go swimming," Jonathan said, sounding slightly chagrined.

"_And_?"

"And he didn't knock," he said, as if it were the most natural thing in the world to fling a dose of crippling terror at a _friend_ coming through his front door unannounced.

Al sighed, her irritation warring with a tiny spark of amusement.

"Could we have the antidote, please?"

"I think not."

The amusement died.

"Squishy! Eddums is in there terrif--" No, she shouldn't tell him _that_. He would only want to prolong the experience. She might occasionally (_very_ rarely) be able to appeal to his nobler side, but this was not one of those occasions, she knew. "You know, I'm not going to leave you alone until you fix him."

"I'm prepared to ignore you all day."

"Fine," Al growled. "We'll just fix him some tea and put him to bed. In _your_ bed," she clarified when he didn't answer. "I hope you have some pajamas you don't mind letting him borrow. His clothes are going to be all sweaty and gross after all this time snuggled up under the cushions in this heat." Still no answer. "Maybe we should give him a bath. That's nice and relaxing, isn't it? We'll use your shower. Of course, I can't promise everything will go according to plan once the three of us get poor Eddums all naked in your bathroom, so hot and slippery--"

The door opened just a crack. A hand extended toward her, holding a syringe half full of some clear liquid.

"If he needs to recover, he does it in _your_ bed."

"Oh, that should be fun," Al teased. She seized Jonathan's wrist instead of the syringe, refusing to allow him to retreat before she was ready to let him go. He, in turn, refused to allow her to pull him any farther out of the lab, leaving her with the distinct impression that, because she couldn't see him, he must be hiding something.

"Let me go," he growled.

"No."

"I'm working on something."

"You didn't tell me why you gassed him."

"He didn't knock," Jonathan repeated. Al demonstrated her skepticism by continuing to hold his hand. "He's _your_ friend. Maybe you should have taught him some manners."

"Squishy, I have to say it's a bit of a _faux pas_ to literally drive your guests _insane_. You, sir, have no room to talk."

He tried again to take his hand back. She held on, grimly determined to learn the truth now.

"Al..."

"Are you going to quote Dr. Lecter?" she asked. "Something about how, whenever possible, you prefer to eat the rude?"

"Eat?" he said blankly. Al sighed. Sometimes, in spite of their best efforts, pop culture references were just lost on this man. But she would have thought her own mad doctor would have known _something_ about his fictional counterpart.

"Eddie," she said. "Talk, or I'm coming in."

"Why?" he exploded. "You have the antidote, you got your way, and every second you waste here is another second he'll spend developing a debilitating fear of sh--uh..." He cleared his throat awkwardly. Al tightened her grip on his wrist.

"Of _what_?"

"It's not important."

_Oh, really?_ She let go of his wrist. At the sudden loss of tension, he stumbled back, giving her room to kick open the door.

Al's first instinct was to laugh. Not at what he was wearing, but at the fact that he was embarrassed about it. For crying out loud, it was the middle of summer. He wasn't exactly the only person in Gotham walking around in a t-shirt and running shorts. But this was the first time she had seen him, other than in costume or in bed, not looking like he was ready for a business meeting. Sure, his clothes tended to be a little shabby and well worn, but still always somewhat formal. He didn't wear t-shirts, and he _never_ wore shorts.

And she could see why. She clamped her lips shut, holding back comments about chicken legs and knobby knees. Something like _that_, most likely, was what had gotten Eddie in trouble.

And Jonathan was clearly not at all happy about being seen this way; he was glaring at her like he'd never glared before, crossing his arms over his chest as if to hide his shame.

"What's...so...funny?" he asked dangerously.

Damn. She couldn't help the smile.

_No one would ever guess you had such a nice ass._

She didn't dare say that out loud, so she just shrugged, gave him a sympathetic smile, and said, "At least it's not a speedo."


End file.
